


Dreambubbles Don't Run on Physics

by Newtavore



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angels are Dicks, Because Eridan Really Needs Them, Broken Eridan, Comfort, Delusions, Forgiveness, Hah That's Actually a Tag, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Illusions, LOWAA, M/M, Punishment, Resurrection, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1682870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtavore/pseuds/Newtavore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tying your scarf around your waist should not keep your two halves together, but it does. Continuing to walk when faced with a vertical wall should result in a bruised forehead, but instead you keep walking as if the wall is the new floor. If you trip, you should fall down, not up, and turning one hundred and eighty degrees should put you on a different path than the one you were taking, not the same one. The stark landscape of the Land of Wrath and Angels was confusing enough, but now, without even the barest hint of physical law to govern the place, you’re suffering from motion sickness more often than not. </p><p> </p><p>You thought you’d escaped the Angels when you died, but of course, you have to be punished for your transgressions in some way or another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreambubbles Don't Run on Physics

**Author's Note:**

> yeh more angel headcanons i guess, even tho it's not technically in LOWAA

Dream bubbles don’t run on physics. 

 

 

It’s probably one of the most infuriating and nerve wracking things about being dead, you suppose. Things that shouldn’t work, do, and things that should work, don’t, and if you fell to the floor in a screaming fit of dizziness and sheer _wrong_ , well, it wouldn’t be the first time. 

 

Tying your scarf around your waist should not keep your two halves together, but it does. Continuing to walk when faced with a vertical wall should result in a bruised forehead, but instead you keep walking as if the wall is the new floor. If you trip, you should fall down, not up, and turning one hundred and eighty degrees should put you on a different path than the one you were taking, not the same one. The stark landscape of the Land of Wrath and Angels was confusing enough, but now, without even the barest hint of physical law to govern the place, you’re suffering from motion sickness more often than not. 

 

You thought you’d escaped the Angels when you died, but of course, you have to be punished for your transgressions in some way or another. 

 

They follow you, not touching, but threatening, whispering, crooning to you in soft, pitying voices and telling you you did nothing wrong, that you were in the right for attacking, defending, even though you _know_ that you fucked up. They take the circumstances and twist them around until you are the victim, a martyr in unwinnable circumstances, unable to do anything but fight your way out, but you know they’re lying, you know they aren’t right. 

 

That was your mistake, the first time. Listening to them. That was the first rule of LOWAA, and the second rule you’d broken. 

 

Don’t listen to the Angels.

 

Don’t antagonize the Angels. 

 

Don’t believe what you see.

 

Don't let them catch you. 

 

All four of those rules, you’d broken, and you’d paid the price for it. Everyone had. The angels… they had a way of burrowing into your skull, eating away at everything that makes you, _you_ , and even just thinking about it leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth and a fine tremble to your limbs, remembering the hell they'd put you through.

 

The first time you’d shot one, it had been an accident. 

 

You- you just hadn’t _known_ about what they were capable of, of what they could _do_ , and when Feferi jumped out from behind a pillar, clothed in daywalker shrouds and shrieking about your failures as a moirail, as a troll, you’d reacted on instinct, punching a hole in the illusion before you could even think. 

 

Then Feferi had melted into an angel, grotesque and splayed out in death throes, violet blood spilling over the ground in waves, and you think it was at that point that you’d realized how truly fucked you were. 

 

They are capable of shifting their forms, melting into things they take from your own memories and nightmares and modifying them until they’re that much more terrifying, that much more mind breaking. They use it against you, goad you, take the forms of your friends and quadrant mates- when you’d had them, anyways- and say horrible, horrible things to your face and it just… 

 

It _hurts_. It hurt when you were alive and it still hurts when you’re dead, because now the angels have that much more ammunition, that much more truth to play with and twist into their own weapons, and by the gods, do they love using their weapons on you. 

 

You were jealous, hatefully so, at first, of all the other trolls and their pretty lands or their empty lands or their lands filled with kind consorts, and while you aren’t really jealous anymore you still wonder, _why you_. Why are _you_ stuck with the monsters, why are _you_ forced to suffer in a land that should be tailor made to you, why are _you_ left alone night in and night out with shades of those you care about taunting you, _breaking_ you. 

 

The answer was always there in front of you, but you were too stupidly selfish to figure it out. Now though, in the clarity of death, you realize. 

 

_Punishment_. 

 

You are being punished for your sins, your transgressions, your hateful personality and bitchy self interest. Human karma has taken you by the throat and shaken you, hard, until you’re nothing but insensate jelly smeared across the broken glass gravel. You were a horrible person and, if you’re to be truthful to yourself, you still are, and that’s why you’re cursed with these horrible monsters as your consorts. 

 

They hate you and pity you and coddle you and wreck you all in equal measure and you know it’s because of how much you feel all those same things for yourself. 

 

You hate yourself, you want to rip yourself to pieces and laugh over the blood splattering the floor, but you’re suffused with sweeps and sweeps of built up self pity as well, and sometimes you can’t help but crawl into a little pile for one and cry, because your life is so fucking terrible, isn’t it. With your shipwreck hive and fancy clothes and gold jewelry, right, your life was horrible. With your empty quadrants and hateful lusus and bitter, polluted oceans, yeah, your life was just _awful,_ wasn't it. 

 

There are bitemarks all over your hands from your attempts to keep yourself in a normal state of mind, and you’ve taken up repetitive horn grinding, abrading the sharp points of keratin to dull, unsightly cusps. 

 

It gets worse when the angels come in droves, and you’re surrounded by the bodies of the other game players, all of them whispering to you accusingly and, in fits of delusional lunacy you wonder if this is how Sollux felt, hounded by the voices of the dying. Then, you can’t tell up from down anymore, the lack of natural laws leaving you lost and distressed, running through walls and ceilings and roofs and doors and just trying to escape, to get away. They follow, of course. 

 

They always do. 

 

If there’s one thing you can say, it’s that you’re never alone. There’s always an angel or two hanging in your peripheral vision, or, in your weaker, ailing moments, when you’re struck down by guilt and sickness and what have you, curled around you in comforting embrace, whispering in your ear about how worthless you are. 

 

Their touch is like ice but it’s something, and in death, you’re always cold anyways. They wrap their claws around you and tell you they love you like no one else does, tell you that despite your flaws, you are still their little toy, their plaything, and you don’t have anything else, so you just… stop fighting back. 

 

You lose everything in a haze of kind and harsh words, painful and loving touch, everything done in harsh extremes and you just suffer through it because you’re too tired to fight back and you deserve it, you _deserve_ every last moment of agony because _you killed her_. You did horrible, terrible things, and now, the only time you fight against the angels is when they try to tell you otherwise. 

 

And that’s how they find you, curled up in the grasp of an angel, shivering with pain and cold because as kindly as it’s wrapped around you, it has one of its claws embedded in your shoulder. 

 

You don’t think they’re real, at first. You think they’re more angels, come to taunt you with visages of people you once knew, but no longer.  It takes much longer than it should to realize that these aren’t more of your consorts, that these are real, flesh and blood people, and that they aren’t here to hurt you. 

 

You’re so broken by the time they get through to you that you’re not sure why they even bother. It takes days of visits, pleading, yelling, promising, everything they can think of, to get to you step towards them, to put yourself within reach, but when you do… 

 

It’s like coming home. 

 

Karkat wraps his arms around you and he’s hot, burning even, in a way that feels like it’s going to melt the flesh from your bones. You haven’t been warm in so long that you think you’d forgotten what it felt like. 

 

Sollux presses up against your back, protective, sheltering, and he’s not quite as warm as Karkat but anything is warmer than death and angels. 

 

You have to _ask_ them if they’re real, in a soft, hoarse voice, and it aches because you haven’t spoken in so long. There’s no need to speak in LOWAA, the angels already know everything you could ever possibly say. 

 

Sollux flickers psionics over your dull, cracked horns and you know he’s real, none of the angels had ever been able to replicate the careless use of power, and Karkat nods and cries against your chest and says, _you’re the last one, everyone else is home, please come home, Eridan,_ and you don’t know what to do, what to say. 

 

The Game is over, English has been defeated, and now, all you have to do is wake up. 

 

You don’t know how to do that. You don’t know how to deal with life, again, after death, after angels. You don’t know what you’d do without them hating your every step, whispering to you in the dead of day and never leaving you be, ever. 

 

“You’ve paid penance,” Sollux murmurs, one arm wrapped around your chest, pinning you to him, and it feels so strange, everything feels so strange, “Come home.”

 

Your hands are shaky, weak, your grip loose, but you cling to the two of them with everything you have, body wracked with shivers. The angels are crowding around, becoming, crooning and calling and promising such things as you’ve never been promised, hissing and screeching and demanding you stay, but Sol and Kar sandwich you between them and ask you to go, and the decision in made. 

 

You open your eyes, and you’e alive. 

 


End file.
